The present invention relates to an apparatus for the analysis of granular coke, green and baked or burned carbon core samples.
It is the desire of every metal producer to have as much knowledge as possible about the properties of carbon-resistant parts of production equipment, such as anodes, cathodes and ramming paste. There are many factors which decide how a carbon product will react during a metal production process.
When the carbon product comes into contact with the air, in the way that the upper part of an anode usually does, the carbon will corrode. Another unfortunate process which occurs mainly on the underside of, for example, the anodes, is that some of the CO.sub.2 gas from the primary reaction reacts with the carbon to form carbon monoxide. These two conditions are called air reactivity and CO.sub.2 reactivity, respectively. Reactions with the air and CO.sub.2 can lead to crumbling of the anode material which often has the result that operational problems occur with anode particles in the electrolyte. This is called sooting. The coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) is a property of a carbon product which it is useful to know in metal production. Analysis of the coefficient of thermal expansion is called dilatometry.
Devices already exist to decide the above-mentioned properties of carbon products. However, such devices are capable of determining either the reactivity and the soot index or the coefficient of thermal expansion. In addition, the existing apparatuses are often large and imprecise and complicated and time-consuming to use. There has, therefore, long been a need for a more practical apparatus to measure these parameters of carbon products.